[Jewbacca]

As I get more desperate for a long car trip to end, I start calculating in my head the minutes to completion, usually based off of 85 (my typical speed).

For whatever reason, it’s easier when the miles-to-go are bigger than 85, so like 170 is “2 hours,” no thinking

But when the distance-to-go is smaller than 85, I start having problems.

Now, sitting here at a desk, I can do it, but driving somehow uses up that bit of my brain that I use to perform division and I get flustered. That, or I am tired from driving.

Regardless, it’s a way to pass time.

[SoothingDave]

Just drive 60 mph. Makes the math easier.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I like to drive 80 because it makes the math easier. Just divide the miles-to-go by 4 and multiply by 3 to get the minutes-to-go. :)

[PUGACHEV]

My uncle was a traveling salesman with a route which included Houston, Dallas, OK City, and Galveston. That’s a lot of highway driving. I took the tour with him once as a teen-ager, and he would pass the time by reading highways signs, advertisements, and billboards out loud and backward. He’d been doing it for years and could read a newspaper backward as quickly as I could forward.

[Oatka]

For whatever reason, it’s easier when the miles-to-go are bigger than 85, so like 170 is “2 hours,” no thinking.

As a contract programmer, I went wherever there was a job. A couple of long runs were FL to TX or MI to FL. On the MI run coming home (I had seen momma only once every couple of months), I wrote down the distance in 300-400 mile segments on a Post-It note and stuck it in the lower left of my windshield. I left Rochester Hills at 4 a.m and dragged into Navarre, FL at 10 pm (missed the turn South at Milton, FL) - 18 straight hours with only 4 pit stops.

I played mind games like you did: "OK, Bowling Green KY is only X hours away, I can do that; OK, Atlanta, GA is only X hours away; OK, Navarre, FL is only X hours away, Hell, piece of cake".

I was so wired I couldn't sleep but my brother had come down from SC and we had a beer - and that was the last I remembered until the next morning.

I was amazed I pulled it off, but by breaking the trip down into "short" segments, it wasn't bad at all.

[Rebelbase]

In my neck of the woods I have to 70mph as my baseline in calculating travel time and I use a percent method.

Say 50 miles left on a trip at 70mph. I use common core math and round down to 49 as it’s a multiple of 7.

7 is 10% of 70. So It’s gonna take me roughly 70% of an hour to go 50 miles, somewhere around 42 min. or so.